Packer asks port to sell land

Aiming to expand its footprint, The Neil Jones Food Co. wants to buy the 15-acre, 400,000-square-foot complex it currently leases from the Port of Vancouver. Today, the Vancouver-based food processor will present its case to the port’s Board of Commissioners during the board’s regular public meeting.

No final decisions are expected. The site the company wants to buy is the location of Northwest Packing Co., which employs 538 workers at peak times and is one of three processing facilities the company has in Washington and California. Matt Jones, president and chief operating officer of Neil Jones — a privately owned, family-run company — said the company needs to own its site to make the kind of long-term investments needed to remain competitive in the global food industry.

“Purchase of the facility would allow us to have some control of our future,” he said.

In a July 8 letter to the port, company attorney Robert Schaefer wrote that the port should grant Neil Jones the same treatment it is giving Eugene, Ore.-based Farwest Steel Corp. The port is working with Farwest to complete a deal that would hand 22 acres to the company for roughly $5 million to make way for Farwest to build a fabrication, warehousing and distribution facility. That project could eventually create up to 225 jobs. “As you know, many of the ports in the state are selling and have sold properties including ones in our county to encourage economic development,” Schaefer wrote.

Curtis Shuck, the port’s director of economic development and facilities, said he expects the three-member Board of Commissioners to ask port staff to “consider every option” in response to the request by Neil Jones and then produce a recommendation for the board to consider.

Shuck said the port typically does not sell property. “It’s got to be a very unique circumstance,” he said. “Each situation is unique and has to be considered on its merits.”

If the port pursued a sale, Shuck said, it would follow a public process that includes freeing up the property for sale and then negotiating a purchase and sale agreement.

The port “very much” wants to keep Northwest Packing Co. at its current location, Shuck said, and the port has good, strong relationships with the leaders of Neil Jones, including president and COO Jones and his father, chief executive officer Neil Jones.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make this deal a win-win situation,” Shuck said.

The company proposes that it buy the 15-acre site where it currently leases 400,000 square feet of space encompassing its corporate headquarters, a fruit-processing facility, and storage and warehouse spaces. To the north of the 15-acre site, the company owns a 4-acre parcel with about 200,000 square feet of warehouses.

In his letter to the port, Schaefer, the attorney, said Neil Jones has “recently updated all of its computer services and communications systems so that they can become a stronger player in world trade and distribution of food product” and that the company “would like to make Vancouver its world headquarters for its three operating plants and provide a headquarters building.”

Matt Jones declined to give further details of the company’s expansion plans. Nevertheless, he said, the fruit business has become much more dynamic, in part because of China’s entrance as a competitor, and his company must “make investments in the facility to better run the fruits and expand the lines.”

The company operates three divisions in Washington and California:

o Northwest Packing Co. processes a variety of canned fruit and tomatoes along with fruit juice concentrates.

o San Benito Foods in Hollister, Calif., focuses on canned tomato products.

o TomaTek Inc. in Firebaugh, Calif., produces industrial and organic tomato products and custom sauce blends.

The current 25-year lease on the Northwest Packing site expires at the end of 2011. Shuck said the company has an option to extend the lease another 25 years. The company, which has been at the port since 1973, pays $12,905 per month in rent. This year, the port expects to receive a total of about $155,000 in lease payments from the company.

Included in documents the company submitted to the port is an “economic and fiscal benefit assessment” of Northwest Packing Company. The study, by Camas-based Cascade Planning Group, says Northwest Packing’s operations support hundreds of other jobs throughout Clark County. The company “supports an estimated $41.7 million of annual business income within the Clark County economy,” the study says.